Going into Week 2

Date: 30th Mar 2020 @ 8:40pm

Thank you all for your support and patience the last few weeks. The challenges faced have been difficult ones and I am sure we are all feeling rather vulnerable and unsure of what the future weeks hold. The role of school and the wider community in reassuring each other has never been as important in my time as headteacher. Caring for the children, each other, ourselves, our close relatives, friends and neighbours has seen a huge turn of direction from life before the Coronavirus. We have seen some amazing acts of kindness and communities coming together for the good of everyone. 

We have seen our role as a school changed to a provider of work to be completed at home. From educators to childcare for those parents who are critical to the fight against this virus, that has ripped through our lives. From a parent trying to run a job and a household, to a teacher of children. These roles will adapt over the coming weeks and we will settle into them, learning what works well and what we need to change. 

As a parent of a child who attends Christleton High, I received a letter that had a wonderful statement from Mr Jones, the Headteacher, I would like to echo. 

If I can stress the importance of one thing, it’s this: at the end of all of this, your children’s mental health and well-being will be more important than their academic skills. How they felt during this time will stay with them long after the memory of what they did during these next weeks is long gone.  So keep that in mind, every single day.

I would like to stress that the learning we continue to share is the deepening and using of previous learning from school. We cannot continue with developing new learning at the pace we could do in school, well aware that the provision at home is very different. We are also mindful that families may only have one device to access the internet, with adults using it for their work too. We are attempting to provide learning that is not solely on gadgets but there will obviously be a need for children to access technology at some times.

I know many of you have taken the opportunity to contact class teachers through the home-learning emails, please continue to do so should you have any questions or queries. Class teachers will continue to add work to the Blogs of the school website with additional activities that could be completed either using their logins or recorded on paper or in workbooks. We will not set ‘learning’ activities during the Easter holidays, however there are recommended links and activities on the Home Learning page of the website, that could be completed, should you wish. 

One positive piece of news, the Amasing event at the Storyhouse has been rescheduled for October.  Hopefully we will see this echoed with other events that have been lost along the way.  And I do hope you enjoyed Mr Gilbert's fabulous reading of The Lumberjack's Beard (if you haven't seen it, it's below) - look out for Episode 3 of Ashtonory tomorrow.

Take care and stay safe.

Mr Hover